Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Late Show: The Harder They Fall (1956)

The following is Thrilling
Days of Yesteryear’s contribution toThe Late Show: The Last Movies Blogathon, currently
underway atShadowplayfrom December
1-7. The blogathon takes a look at the
cinematic “curtain calls” from actors, directors, etc.—and as always, there are
spoilers ahead in this essay. (Oh, and
thanks to my BBFF Stacia for giving me the heads-up on this ‘thon.)

Famed sportswriter Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart) finds
himself pounding the pavement after the newspaper for which he wrote a column
for nearly twenty years goes belly up.
He’s been asked by shady fight promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) to stop
by a gymnasium and get a gander at Benko’s latest acquisition—an Argentinean
strong man named Toro Moreno (Mike Lane), whom Benko plans to tout as the next
heavyweight champion. That’s going to
take some doing…because after watching Moreno
spar with a trainer (Jersey Joe Walcott), it’s crystal clear to Eddie that Toro
has no future in the fight game. “A
powder-puff punch and a glass jaw—that’s a great combination,” is Eddie’s wry
assessment of Moreno’s boxing abilities.

But the aspiring boxer will be at the center of a symbiotic
relationship between Eddie and Benko: Nick needs Willis because of his
considerable cachet in the sports world, and Eddie needs a “bank account.” “A man past his forties shouldn’t have to run
anymore,” Willis informs his new boss.
Eddie suggests that they start building Toro’s career out in California
(“They like freak attractions out there.”), and with the help of Benko’s man Max
(Herbie Faye), Team Toro will find enough boxers out there willing to take a
dive to disguise Moreno’s lack of fighting ability.

Toro’s first fight is a sham…and Art Leavitt (Harold J.
Stone), a television sportscaster and close friend of Willis’, recognizes it as
such, planning to blow the whistle on Nick’s operation to the boxing
commission. Eddie is able to talk him
out of it, and “The Wild Man of the Andes’” career
begins to build up speed thanks to Eddie’s promotional abilities (he’s now got
10% of Toro as Nick’s partner) and fixed fights. The Moreno
caravan starts to move toward the East Coast, with Toro landing a bout with
ex-heavyweight champ Gus Dundee (Pat Comiskey).
Benko is paying Gus $100,000 to tank for Toro…but it looks like he won’t
have to. Dundee
is suffering from injuries sustained in his last bout with new heavyweight
champion Buddy Brannen (Max Baer), injuries that come to the fore once he steps
into the ring with Toro. Gus dies on the
operating table from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Toro’s next opponent is champion Brannen…who’s a bit put out
that Toro is getting the notoriety for Gus’ demise—“I did all the work and your
guy gets all the glory,” he complains to Eddie.
So Buddy has a score to settle with Toro…if Toro even gets into the
ring. The boxer is wracked with guilt
over Gus’ death, until Eddie finally has to tell him that the fix has been in
from the beginning. Willis tells Toro
that he can’t win and Brannen can’t be bought…so the best he can do is hang in
as long as he can and take a dive at his best opportunity.

Toro winds up massacred by Brannen in their bout. His face looks like a meat grinder, and his
jaw has been broken. He asks Eddie to
get the money owed him so he can return home to Argentina, and when Eddie
arrives at Nick’s offices he learns that Toro’s contract has been sold to Jim
Weyerhause (Edward Andrews), another crooked manager…who’ll make his money back
by having Toro return to the boxing circuit and take dives for the next
up-and-comer. On top of this indignity,
Eddie learns from Nick’s accountant Leo (Nehemiah Persoff) that after all the
expenses and sleight-of-hand cooking of the books…Toro has netted a grand total
of $49.07 for the beating he took from Brannen.

The oleaginous Edward Andrews plays crooked manager Weyerhause...but his fellow sleazebag (wearing the hat) is none other than George Cisar, known to the TDOY faithful as capitalist swine banker Cyrus Tankersley from Mayberry R.F.D.

Eddie spirits Toro out of the hospital and puts the boxer on
a plane back to Buenos Aires…with
$26,000, Eddie’s own “take” in the enterprise.
Nick and a couple of his boys come around looking for Toro, and Benko is
none-too-pleased about Eddie’s shenanigans (“A man that gives away twenty-six
thousand dollars, you can’t talk to…I wanna tell ya one more thing—I wouldn’t give
26 cents for your future.”). But Willis
can no longer be bought or scared off, and he sits down at his typewriter to
write the following:

Novelist-screenwriter Budd Schulberg penned The Harder They Fall in 1947, a
novel about the reputed corruption behind the sweet science whose main
character, Eddie Willis, was purportedly modeled after sportswriter and event
promoter Harold Conrad. It was the
character of boxer Toro Moreno that
would generate the most controversy, however, particularly when the book was
adapted (the screenplay was written by Philip Yordan, who also produced the
film) for the silver screen eight years later.
The model for Toro was controversial pugilist Primo Carnera, a former
heavyweight champion in the 1930s whose career was dogged by persistent rumors
that his manager had ties to the mob and that many of his bouts, including the
one where he took the title from heavyweight champion Jack Sharkey in 1933,
were not entirely on the up-and-up. (After
Harder came out in 1956, Carnera
sued Columbia Pictures for defamation of character…but he did not prevail in
the courts.)

Interestingly, the boxer who would defeat Carnera in real
life to claim the heavyweight title was Max Baer…who repeats his triumph here
playing Buddy Brannen, the pugilist who ends Toro Moreno’s reign in the
ring. (Both Baer and Carnera also faced
off in the 1933 Myrna Loy film The
Prizefighter and the Lady…though Primo was fortunate to win that cinematic
fight.) The presence of Baer, not to mention
former boxers Walcott (in a wonderfully understated performance as the trainer
George) and Comiskey (as Gus Dundee), adds a needed note of realism to the
film; there is also a poignant moment where Willis and sportscaster chum
Leavitt watch an interview Art has conducted with a punch-drunk pugilist,
played by former boxer Joe Grebb.

If the gentleman massaging Gus Dundee's (ex-pugilist Pat Comiskey) neck looks familiar...it's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory/Chico and the Man star Jack Albertson in a small role as Gus' manager.

But The Harder They
Fall is perhaps best remembered as the cinematic swan song of Oscar-winning
thespian Humphrey Bogart. It certainly wasn’t
planned that way: his next project was going to be a film with wife Lauren
Bacall (a movie that was eventually made as Top Secret Affair with Kirk Douglas and Susan Hayward) but the esophageal
cancer that came from a lifetime of smoking and drinking had already started to
take its toll—some of which is unmistakably noticeable in Harder. (It became part of Hollywood
legend that Bogie’s voice had to be re-dubbed in several places in the film
because of his sickness, but this is simply not true.) The pop culture icon known as Bogart would
leave this world for a better one on January
14, 1957.

Whether or not you believe that Paul Frees re-dubbed some of cancer-stricken Humphrey Bogart's lines in this film...you cannot deny that he is, indeed, everywhere (as the priest who counsels a grief-stricken Toro).

The character of Eddie Willis in Harder is pretty much classic Bogart; a cynic who sets his scruples
aside for the moment in order to obtain greater material rewards. Eddie Willis is a professional; he’s able to foresee
and navigate the pitfalls prevalent in the effort to pass off tenth-rate
fighter Toro as a champ, and he can fall back on his knowledge of how the game
is played when it comes to negotiating to his advantage (as witnessed in a
scene where he confronts Weyerhause and his fellow managers, who are angling
for a bigger slice of Toro’s pie). Eddie
also has to call in a few favors: he convinces old friend Art to play dumb
before the boxing commission when they plan to investigate Toro’s phony first
fight…even though his friendship with Leavitt suffers tremendous damage
afterward. (Bogart’s Willis has a great
line after Art wants to know what more can be done to “close the books”: “Just
stop looking at me as if I’d picked your pocket.”)

For the most part, the characters played by Bogart (though
there are exceptions) achieve a sort of moral redemption by movie’s end—with Willis
being an excellent example. He has
difficulty turning a blind eye to how unhappy Toro is at fighting, particularly
after Toro’s manager Luis Agrandi (Carlos Montalban, brother of Ricardo) is
sent back to Argentina
when his visa expires. It pains Eddie to
see Toro so upset at the thought that he was responsible for Dundee’s
demise, but it’s worse when he asks George (a 53-year-old, washed-up fighter)
to show Toro he’s not the boxer he thinks he is. What buries the camel in a straw stack for
Willis is when he learns that Leo’s creative accounting is going to leave Toro
with less than fifty bucks in the boxer’s pocket (“He took the worst beating I
ever saw in my life! You want me to go back there and tell him that all he gets
is a lousy $49.07 for a broken jaw?
How much would you take?”) and that
in the big picture, Toro is nothing more than a commodity to be bought and
sold. (He particularly blanches when
Nick compares the fighters he owns to horses in stables.)

Despite his age and frailty, Bogart is still effective
playing the tough guy; it’s as if his elder statesman status protects him from
the punks in Nick’s employ (when several of his goons menacingly threaten to
work Eddie over he snarls, referring to the beating Toro took: “He didn’t have five guys in the ring with him”). As the film heads for a wrap, Eddie’s ready
to take a sledgehammer to the corrupt Nick’s operation via the power of the pen
(and with the support of his wife Beth, played by TDOY fave Jan “Smoochie” Sterling). At a time when the philosophy in Hollywood
was “If you want to send a message, call Western Union,”
the communication that Congress needs to either clean up boxing or ban it is
very rare for a mainstream studio film.

Bogart’s classy final performance is supported by first-rate
turns by the cream of the movie industry’s character actor crop: you have a
sensational presentation from Steiger—whose character of Nick Benko is little
more than just a hood, but his charm and good manners have clearly taken him
places. Sterling
is underused as Bogie’s spouse, but is able to utilize her usual “hard-boiled
dame” casting in an effectively softer way as the woman who’s able to show
Eddie that his moral bearings have been cut loose. Other great showcases are provided by Lane
(as the gentle and awkward Toro), Persoff (as oily account Leo), Stone, Andrews,
Montalban and Faye. Harder wasn’t director Mark Robson’s first rodeo in the sweet
science, seven years earlier he directed Kirk Douglas in the equally
hard-hitting Champion (another
boxing film that reeks of sweaty gymnasiums and corruption). The film was submitted to the Cannes Film
Festival in 1956, but the only nomination Harder
received at the Academy Awards was for Burnett Guffey’s striking
black-and-white cinematography.

The little boy in front of the TV set later quit the acting game and went into honest work as conservative pundit Tony Blankley (who passed away in January 2012). (Okay, I just realized I used the words "honest" and "conservative pundit" in the same sentence...take it easy on me in the comments section, huh?)

As a longtime member of the Cult of Bogart, I think it was
great that one of my favorite movie actors got to go out on such a high note
with this film. But I admire The Harder They Fall for other reasons
as well: chiefly, it is one of the hardest-hitting treatises on the sport of
boxing ever lensed, fearless in telling its audience that the fix is in,
not-at-all squeamish in focusing on its brutality, and disturbingly callous in
its treatment of boxers as nothing more than cattle. Sadly, the words Bogart’s Willis pounds out
on his typewriter at the film’s end go no further than the flickering images on
a silver screen.

Wow, Ivan, I'm getting to know lots of new titles to watch. Bogie's last film mustbe great according to your review. Imagine if his last movie was with Lauren Bacall, how bittersweet it would have been! Don’t forget to read my Saratoga entry for the blogathon! :)Greetings!